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[ Fourth Industrial Revolution ]
Download the
Where’s My Mind?
app in the Google Play
store. Researchers plan
to develop the app for
iOS in the coming year.
26 ARIZONA ALUMNI MAGAZINE
by Jessica Andrews-Hanna
Fitness Tracker for Your Mind
Inside our thoughts and emotions
ake a moment to reflect on the landscape of your inner mental experience — the thoughts,
Tfeelings and emotions that have shaped you into the person you are today.
What do you think about on a day-to-day basis? Are your thoughts a source of happiness,
creativity and inspiration? Or do they fuel distress, anxiety and distraction?
Despite its importance for our cognitive and mental well-being, the nature of daily thinking
remains a mystery, largely because thoughts are hidden and difficult to study.
The Neuroscience of Emotion and Thought Lab at the University of Arizona, together with
researchers at the University of Colorado, is trying to fill this gap in our scientific understanding
of the mind by taking advantage of smartphone technology. They recently developed a free
mobile Android app called Where’s My Mind? that sends users surveys at random moments to
capture the nature of their mental experience.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:
After downloading the app, users are The researchers are building a large, anonymous
provided details about the research study. international database of daily thinking patterns
Next, they are asked to answer questions and are excited to already have over 1,000
assessing their demographic characteristics international users.
As the database grows, they are starting to gain
and aspects of their personality, goals and important insight into the Four C’s of thinking:
well-being.
These questions will give the researchers 1. Content. What do people typically think about
a better sense of who is using the app and in day-to-day life?
reveal how daily thinking patterns differ 2. Context. How do thoughts typically change as
across people. a function of what people are doing, such as
Following these questions, the app helps working or procrastinating?
users track their thoughts over time. It 3. Correlates. How do thoughts differ across
does so by sending the user’s device a push people of different ages, cultures and outlook
notification four random times each day on life? How do thoughts relate to mental
during specified waking hours. health, including depression and anxiety?
Users can choose to ignore the push or 4. Consequences. Are certain types of thoughts
answer a short survey about the nature of helpful or harmful for our cognitive and
their thoughts, mood and activities right emotional well-being?
before they received the notification. One class of thoughts the researchers are trying
After completing roughly a week of to understand is often called “mind-wandering.”
thought surveys, the app will show users We all have the experience of mind-wandering,
helpful graphs of their daily thought but we do so in different ways and with different
patterns, and users can choose to see how consequences.
their thoughts compare with the average The researchers want to understand both the
user. The graphs will be updated as users costs and benefits of mind-wandering. A large
continue to use the app and as the database user database will be critical to answering these
grows. questions.